HI, all! Wednesday’s back! I want to get right to it this week, because I think it’s no coincidence God brought us here. There have been several verses that lined up just right with my life as we’ve Wednesday’ed our way through the Bible. This week is one of those. If I Thessalonians caught your attention, tell us all about it in the comments, then come back for II Thessalonians next week!
I Thessalonians 4:13 (NIV)–Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope.
I’ve seen this vividly played out over the past couple of weeks. There is a huge difference watching someone grieve a death and watching someone grieve the death of a Christian. One is hopeless, cold, and forever. The other embraces hope, a future, and forever. But that’s a whole different kind of forever.
These past few weeks, I have thanked God for hope. I’ve thanked God for the fact that earthly death is not the end, but that life truly does go on. Isn’t it like God to remind us, just when we need to know it the most?
-JB
When I glanced back over this book to what I had underlined previously, nothing seemed to jump out, so I prayed about it and reread until God brought out what he wanted me to see today. I think it’s awesome that the verse was already underlined, but when I read it without seeking God’s guidance and message, I glanced right over it.
1 Thessalonians 2:8 – We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us.
This verse is very convicting to me right now. I think about the people I love the most and find most dear to my heart and how I don’t share the gospel with them and therefore, I’m not really sharing my life with them either. It just makes me look at myself and realize that the only way for me to really show and demonstrate love is to share God with my family and friends. Yeah, it’s easy sometimes to share with people not close to us, but how messed up is that? It’s like we are leaving those most dear to us to hang out to dry. What kind of love is that to not share the love of our father?
You always seem to find the one that is most convicting to me, too. I wonder how I’m doing, and I know it’s not good when it comes to that. It’s so much harder to really show ourselves to those that are most important sometimes. Really, what have we got to lose? And they have everything to gain. I so need to remember that…